


anchor

by solrosan



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Families of Choice, Families of Convenience, Finding Quynh, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25588276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: Nile keeps dreaming about Quynh, except one night it's different. One night, she doesn't dream of her drowning.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 221





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Nile startles awake. Her pillow is on the floor and her duvet at the end of the bed, she feels clammy and her heart is beating fast, but that hadn’t been a nightmare. She dreams of her death a lot, not her actual death (not any of them, really), but she dreams that she dies over and over, in so many different ways. It’s always with the same sandy backdrop in a war zone though and her blood always colours the ground red. 

Joe’s told her that it’s normal, or at least that all of them went through something similar. He had dreamt much more of killing Nicky than of his own death, but all the others had died over and over in their dreams for decades after that first death. They think it’s a way for the brain to process it, because it is a lot to process.

This dream, however, had been about the woman in the coffin. The drowning, scared, angry woman. 

Quynh. 

But something hadn’t been right. She hadn’t been drowning. Or been scared.

Nile gets up. She puts the pillow back on the bed and goes to the kitchen. For about four months now after they left Booker to contemplate life and eternity or whateverthefuck, they have lived in a three bedroom villa in Portugal. It’s painfully obvious that she sleeps in Booker’s room and she hasn’t done anything to clear him out of it. None of the others have made any attempts to influence her one way or the other. 

She can’t say she feels at home here, not in Portugal and not with these people, but she’s getting there. The others have centuries of inside jokes that go over her head, they treat her like the child they probably rightfully think she is sometimes which drives her mad, and they are all in different stages of grieving both Booker’s betrayal and Andy’s lost immortality, but they are good to her. She’s slowly starting to realise how _lucky_ she is that she didn’t have to wander for years upon years alone and confused before they found her.

Rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes -- even though the images of Quynh are still as clear as if she’d still been asleep -- she gets out a glass and fills it with water. Then she almost drops it when the light is switched on.

“Sorry,” says Nicky quietly, standing in the doorway with messy hair and a ripped t-shirt over his boxers. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t,” she says, both of them knowing that it’s the poorest lie ever told. “Did I wake you?”

“No.”

He doesn’t give an explanation, but she gets a feeling he, at least, is telling the truth. She’s heard all of them wake from nightmares by now and she can’t help wondering what’s keeping him up tonight. She’d never ask and she’s fairly sure he wouldn’t tell her if she did.

“Do you want company?” he asks.

“Sure.”

Nicky gives her a tired smile and puts the kettle on, offering to make her a cup of tea as well. She accepts even if she doesn’t really want it, still not completely sure how and what is expected of her and in how many ways she might offend these people.

“I dreamt of Quynh again,” she says, very carefully, because at least she’s figured out that the woman’s faith is a gapping, unclosed wound for all of them, not just for Andy.

Nicky stops mid-motion as he reaches for the cupboard. 

“I’m sorry,” he says sympathetically as he follows through and gets the mugs out without looking at her. “I can’t even imagine how…” He shakes his head and corrects himself, “I don’t want to imagine how that must feel.”

“See the thing is,” Nile starts, still thinking hard about every word, “she wasn’t drowning this time.”

Nicky’s head snaps around, his eyes are wide when he stares at her. “She-- She finally died? She didn’t come back?”

There is something broken, pleading in his voice, as if he hopes she’ll confirm that his friend is finally free from the hell she’s been suffering for half a millennia. 

“She didn’t die at all,” says Nile. “She… I saw her on land. There were flowers and a bench and…”

She trails off when she sees the hope in Nicky’s eyes morph into something she can’t put words to. The closes she comes is “fear”.

“What more did you see?” he asks. 

“She was sitting on the bench. I think it was a park and that there were… pigeons? What, why? What does it mean?”

Nicky runs a hand over his face, stopping over his mouth. His eyes still wide with whatever feeling that is.

“When was this?” Nile asks, thinking she might have triggered a bad memory.

Nicky slowly removes his hand from his mouth. “As far as I know, we only dream of now and if you didn’t see her drown…”

“Does that mean-- Is she--”

“I don’t know,” says Nicky, shaking his head, “but you need to tell Andy.”

“Now?”

Nicky glance at the clock over the microwave; the angry, red numbers says that it’s 03:22. After what seems to be a not insignificant internal struggle he looks back at Nile.

“Let’s drink the tea first,” he says. 

Confused, Nile nods and watches as he pours hot water over the teabags, and she takes the mug when he hands it to her. He suggests the sun deck, and she’s just dressed enough in her shorts and top to agree. 

It’s still dark outside and the summer is long gone, but the cool air and the scent from the Atlantic clears her head. Curling up on a deckchair with a cup of tea helps too. Nicky gives her one of the blankets they keep by the door, but she doesn’t use it. 

“Are you sure it’s Quynh?” Nicky asks after a while, when their tea doesn’t risk scalding their tongues anymore.

Nile nods. “It’s the same rage, the same…”

“Insanity?”

Nile meets his eyes in the dark. She doesn’t want to say it, but she has to. “Yes.”

Nicky mumbles something in a language Nile doesn’t know. It’s probably Italian, but she can’t say for sure. She’s fairly sure it’s a curse, or a blessing -- it’s hard to tell with the men sometimes -- and a habit more than something she’s supposed to hear or understand. They are pretty good otherwise, to not speak languages she doesn’t understand around her. Joe sometimes tries to talk Arabic with her, though, clearly impressed (or grateful?) that she had taken the time to learn a little before going on her tour.

“What more did you see?” asks Nicky. “A bench, a park… Any landmarks?”

“No, just that. And her. She wore a dark red coat, if that helps?”

Nicky exhales slowly, looking out into the darkness. The sliding door behind them is pushed open. They turn around, seeing the outline of Joe standing there. He changes from Italian to English, starting again, as soon as he notices that Nicky isn’t alone.

“Rough night all around?” he asks, stepping out on the sun deck.

Nicky takes his hand. “Can you get Andy, love?”

“At four in the morning?” Joe frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Nicky looks at Nile who looks up at Joe, yet it’s Nicky who says, “We think Quynh is… ashore.”

Joe turns to Nile. “You, you saw her in a dream?”

“Yes.”

Joe mutters under his breath in Arabic. Nile doesn’t understand what he says. Without another word Joe leaves the sun deck and not long after, he comes out again, followed by Andy wrapped in a bathrobe. 

“What the fuck, Nicky?” she says, glaring at both him and Nile. 

Joe pushes her in the direction of the deckchairs. “Sit down.” 

Andy sits down next to Nicky and Joe next to Nile. 

“If this is an intervention--”

“I dreamt of Quynh again,” says Nile, interrupting Andy’s annoyed mutterings and effectively shutting her up. Even through the darkness Nile can see the pain in her eyes at the mere mention of the name. Nicky takes Andy’s hand as a precaution, but Andy doesn’t seem to notice. 

“She wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean,” Nile continues. “She sat on a park bench.”

Andy gasps, as if she’s the one coming up for air for the first time in 500 years. 

Then there is complete silence, and for a moment, time actually comes to a stop.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from something I remember my grandmother used to say. She said that you can't be everyone's anchor all the time, because if you don't get up for air you'll drown. Now, I'm sure my grandmother didn't coin this metaphor, but she's my grandmother and I'm sticking with it!


End file.
